I do not want to duck the Norway L21 problem but its not easy. Anyway here goes.

Norway is kind of like Ireland in that its very peripheral geography to most of Europe and small population size made it perfect for early founder effects to create an atypical clade count. Your path to Norway from Denmark is possible even if there was just a small amount of L21 there. Founder effects can really skew things and make the dna of the offshoot very atypical of the dna of the donor population. Obviously the idea of founder effects only works well if L21 spread really early when the country was lightly settled. Over to the variance number crunchers...

Here is an alternative. If we are talling about later times, the country was already well settled and I think we must be more looking more at a Ghengis effect of an elite. I suspect there was a Celtic colony controlling the amber trade down the Elbe to central Europe somewhere in or adjacent to Denmark. There are strange hints of Celts in and around Denmark in classical history although I still think they must have been very outnumbered given the lack of evidence. The Celts had a habit of commanding the criucial nodal points in trade. Controlling iron is probably why they were in southern Poland for example. I suspect that is something that has its roots in the bronze age trade networks. If there was such a colony in Denmark then perhaps some jumped on to Norway to exploit the trade in raw materials there and somehow ended up expanding without leaving a linguistic and cultural legacy that lasted long enough to be recorded in history.

There is a lot of sense in that post and to the middle position you take. The wipeout idea is crazy. Land is worth nothing to even a couple of 100,000 conquerors if they do not have the several million tillers of the soil needed to use it. There is no evidence for mass regeneration of woods and wastes so its pretty clear that the Britons became a big part of the peasant stock across Anglo-Saxon England.

I'm not sure why you think the population of Britain runs into several millions. The estimates for the Domesday population of England is only 1.9 - 2.0 m and that is the result of a rising population in the 9th, 10th and 11th cents. 650 AD is seen as the nadir for european population levels and several estimates put the 650 AD figure for Britain between 1.2m and 1.5m.

It is generally accepted that the population was higher during the roman period, Härke estimating 2.0m, Millet 3.9 million for the whole of Britain, around 3m for England.

Moreover, there is no evidence for Britons acting as farm labourers for the germanic settlers on the scale that you propose. Anglo Saxon settlements are rather small and in fact, few and far between. There is no reason to suppose that they either needed to be, or were in fact, serviced by British labourers. As I stated earlier, it is tempting to assume it because it seems plausible, but there is no evidence to support it, nor is it necessary. Other Germanic migrations on the Continent were large enough for them to manage themselves, available land was the problem. A decline in the population of Britain would have made such land available.

Go to any village in England and, for every 60 people that you see, try to imagine that 57 or 58 of them are simply not there. That gives an idea of the population density of the time.

I just do not believe there were enough potential settlers in a place like Jutland and S. Holstein to operate the agricultural economy of a place the size of England. The carrying capacity of a large, fertile place like England is surely much larger than those areas. It seems to me they either had to have solo run a small portion of England or they would have absorbed large qualities of British farmers into their economy.

To give another Irish example, when the Anglo-Normans invaded, those Irish who remained in the Norman ruled lands of the south and east of Ireland (as a large majority) didnt retain some sort of alternative native material culture. What happened is that as the native Irish became lower status their archaeologicla visibility plumetted to almost zero. Those who could afford the more visible material trappings adopted Norman material culture. There was no alternative parallel native Irish culture retaining old pre-Norman Irish material culture among the Irish peasants under the Normans. However, it seems very much that the native Irish always remained a large majority. So an elite (however rustic and small scale) can come in and effectively knock out the native elite with the result that archaeologically visible sites all look intrusive while the huge native lower status majority become archaeologically invisible.

There are countries where the language spoken is clearly that of an intrusive militaristic elite who are genetically a small minority. I think its well established that only a minority of Hungarians have male lines that are of Magyar origin but their language and national identity is Magyar.

I'm afraid I can't add much to the considered posts flying about, other than the idea that the Welsh and English are two separate races seems a little hard to accept.

I've always put this down to political motivation on both sides of the border (I'm in the middle here, being mostly Welsh but having a Y line from England) with both sides wishing to demonstrate unique heritage. However reading these posts it appears the situation is probably more complex and that something rather odd did occur after the demise of the Roman Empire.

I'll finish this off with a link to a nursery rhyme I first heard when I went to schools in England at the age of 11, I hasten to add that it wasn't used as a taunt but recited by a history teacher.

I am always a little suspicious when the traditional Anglo-Saxon homeland is extended to take in everywhere from Sweden to Belgium. I think its important to stick to the real Danish/north German area where the vast majority are thought to have come from. I am aware of small minority influences from elsewhere in northern Europe from Belgium to Sweden but I would not let that skew the basic comparison. If you compare the L21 count in north Germany and Denmark it is very low to date. In Germany the L21 and U152 concentrations do have an incredible drop off when the Iron Age Celt-German boundary is passed. I think there is an extremely strong pattern and that Norway is a kind of exception which is not a big factor in English history anyway. That the pattern is so strong after a couple of millenia of moving about is pretty remarkable IMO. Given the short period of time there has been to test it, the huge strength of L21 relative to S21 in places like France and the Celtic fringe of the isles is a certainty.

So, I think there is (with some caveats) much in using the S21/L21 ratio as a crude proxy for Germanic and pre-Germanics in Britain. IMO, the figure then may (its not clear) need some afjustment to allow for S21 that is pre-Germanic in Britain. The S21 bit is not as safe as the L21 part of the idea IMO. Anyway the main point is that English R1b still has a substantial proportion of L21, far higher than in the core Anglo-Saxon homelands. Put it this way, given the lack fo Norwegian settlement in England (much more in Scotland, Ireland etc), I dont think nordic L21 is a big factor. So, IMO most Englsih L21 is mainly due to a surviving pre-Germanci element scatterd through eveyr bit of England.

A few observations:I am aware of at least two historians of the Anglo-Saxons who believe they came from across the northwest Germanic world, not just the so-called homelands. Certainly there is evidence in support of this.Ellen Levy Kaufmann cites Mtdna studies of AS remains that indicate the later arrivals had a completely different profile than the earlier ones, which suggests a lack of homogenity amongst them.I have never been a believer in the "Faux doctrine" that all U106 are Germanic. There is really nothing to suuport this idea aside from the desire for a simplistic solution to the complex issue of R1b subclade distribution in Europe. It has only recently been found that the "Frisian" portion of U106 appears to be a subclade distinguished by the L48 SNP. Take that portion out, and I suspect there is little difference between the distribution, as far as we can tell with the skewed results we have at the moment, of U106* and P312*.I think Neal has a point that we just don't know what the R1b composition of Denmark is. The study by Meyres estimated that U106 is about half of Danish R1b. What is the other half? We simply don't know.Finally, I think the best explanation for L21 in Norway is that it got there with the Beakers, probably expanding northwards out of the Rhineland. And I do think that some portion of L21, granted possibly a small one, came in with the Angles.

What a pleasure to see a civilized discussion of this topic, with carefully considered posts. It is particularly good to see Authun here. I strongly support his commentary re numbers, but would just like to add a couple of points.

1) The different regions of England have different histories, and Wales should not be left out of the picture. Britannia was a Romano-British cultural unit, which shattered into shards. Some of them remained British. Some became Anglo-Saxon in the 5th century. Some British areas were taken over later, in a gradual process which continued well after the Norman conquest. As a rule of thumb, the later the assimilation, the longer the Celtic language survived after assimilation. The survival of a language is the biggest clue that the people who spoke it survived.

2) The structure of Anglo-Saxon society, as seen in law codes, included slaves, some of whom could have been British. However there is no clue at all in either law codes, archaeology, place-names or linguistics to support a vision of an Anglo-Saxon elite taking over most of England as a thin layer of government at the top of a mass of farmers of a different ethnicity and language. The pattern is completely different from that of the Franks in France, for example. See Alex Woolfe, Apartheid and economics in Anglo-Saxon England.

As always I see this discussion I am surprised to read how easily people equates language to race. Language is a cultural trait, not a biological one, and ca´n be changed without any requirement for population replacement, there are plenty of examples in history.Celtic British were already invisible in Roman times, yet they were there, I don´t see why could not be the same for AngloSaxon times.

I just do not believe there were enough potential settlers in a place like Jutland and S. Holstein to operate the agricultural economy of a place the size of England. The carrying capacity of a large, fertile place like England is surely much larger than those areas. It seems to me they either had to have solo run a small portion of England or they would have absorbed large qualities of British farmers into their economy.

What period do you describe as an agricultural economy? In the 5th and 6th cents., especially the early 5th cent., food is scarce. There is no requirement for additional manpower to grow food for any economic system, it's down at the self sufficiency basis.

Gildas' description of sub roman Britian, before the Anglo Saxon adventus, is one of constant raiding by Picts and Irish, a ravaged countryside and the country being desitute of provisions with Britons killing their fellow countrymen for the sake of a little sustenance. St Patrick's description, on his escape to Britain from Ireland, tells of his and the ship's crew wandering for many days in a deserted landscape in fear of starvation. Archaeology shows that in some roman towns such as Wroxeter, buildings were demolished and the ground turned over to the production of food. None of this describes an agricultural economy during the period before the adventus.

When the germanic speakers start to settle, they did exactly as you suggest, settle in a small number of areas limited in size, the upper Thames valley, parts of Kent, parts of East Anglia, the Lincolnshire Wolds, the Yorkshire Wolds etc and they stayed there for the best part of two centuries. Britain has a patchwork of small communities, often with defensive structures, dense forest or flooded river valleys on the boundaries. Even as late as the 11th cent. Symeon of Durham describes the area between the Wear and Tees as deserted, thickly forested and home only to thieves and wolves. 6th century Britain probably had many such areas. Modern maps which show kingdoms neatly butting upto neighbouring kingdoms give a false impression.

As you can see from this reconstructed map of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and northern East Anglia, the landscape determines how these kingdoms could develop. Northern Lincolnshire for example, is effectively an island.

The early settlers in LIncolnshire for example, settle only in the Lincolnshire Wolds, bounded to the west by the flooded Ancholme river valley. They don't cross that and start to settle on the Lincolnshire Ridge until the 7th cent. The Lincolnshire Ridge itself is bounded to the west by the flooded Trent valley and the Humberhead levels. There is no market economy, no surplus to be sold. People are growing for their own needs. Other parts of Britain, such as Tintagel in the south west, are doing rather well for themselves, importing oil and wine from the mediterranean world, presumably trading tin in return. North Wales may still be exporting copper, for there are many items made from copper alloys being produced on the continent. But all these areas are acting quite independently from each other.

I'm afraid I can't add much to the considered posts flying about, other than the idea that the Welsh and English are two separate races seems a little hard to accept.

These sort of forums often create a mindset which equates one SNP with one tribe and it is important to remember that all the SNPs predate all the tribes. Invariably, we are comparing one mixed bag of SNPs with another mixed bag of SNPs and the ratio of the mix is as important as the SNPs themselves.

This is what Weale found in his study. The mix in the 5 english counties that he studied showed a good deal of homogenity. This mix was very different from the mix that he found in Wales, even though, at the resolution he was working to, the individual SNPs were more or less the same ones. Moreover, why is this mix or genetic composition, composition being the operative word, closer to the genetic composition of the Frisian samples than the Welsh samples?

Ultimately, yes they are made up of the same peoples but it is the composition of the individual SNPs within a population, not the SNPs themselves, which tells the history of the population.

As a rule of thumb, the later the assimilation, the longer the Celtic language survived after assimilation. The survival of a language is the biggest clue that the people who spoke it survived.

Most of the scholarship in studies of hydronomy or topology has been to determine whether a name or term is germanic or celtic in origin, and occasionally, especially with hydronomy, an earlier language. One topological feature which intrigues me however is celtic in origin and is interchangeable in usage. It comes in several forms, corrie, cwm, cirque or couloir. It is the large bowl cut out of the, usually northern slopes, of mountains where glaciers started. Cirque looks french in origin, corrie is used in Scotland and cwm is used in Wales. What term did they historically use in Cumbria? The lake district has many examples of this feature.

Modern english still retains coombe from OE cumb which is presumed to be one of those rare celtic loan words into english, when it then starts to be used to describe other topological features as well.

I think one of the most crucial aspects is to establish how common L21 is in the coastal areas between the Lower Rhine and Lower Elbe. At present the project maps do give a strong impression that (Norway aside) L21 is rare there and that as with U152, L21 drops off markedly around the Lower to original Middle Rhine-Main boundary which most think was the division between the Celts and Germans.

Although there are a lot of problems using project maps etc, that is the clear impression. There is also thought to be a similar but less sharp divide beween L21 levels in the Celtic fringe areas like Wales, western Scotland, Ireland etc and England. We are not talking about absolutes but strong trends. You cannot expect any absolutes after 1000s of years of human movement. I think the surival of male British lines in England may perhaps be indicated in the way L21 seems to fall less sharply across the isles Germanic-Celtic divide than it appears to do so on the similar former linguistic divide on the continent.

Until the degree that this is skewed by public testing and their pattern of immigration to the new world can be checked then thois is far from concrete. Yes its oversimplified but there seems a strong hint that L21 and S28 experience a sharp drop along the Celtic-Germanic divide of the Iron Age continent and L21 also seems to do so in the Early Medieval British Isles. Clearly this is not a fully tested hypothesis and will remain no more than a tentatiive observation until we have more deep clade R1b1b2 testing in the areas the Anglo-Saxons come from. However, if a very low L21 count is proven to be real in the A-S homeland areas but much higher in England then I think the y-DNA of the lost Britons of England is likely to be the primary source of this discrepancy.

...I have never been a believer in the "Faux doctrine" that all U106 are Germanic....

I agree with you and would also throw subclades of I into the mix. There is at least one subclade of I that seems to track L21's northward distribution. There also may be some subclades of I in the Isles that are indigeneous pre-Briton.

As a rule of thumb, the later the assimilation, the longer the Celtic language survived after assimilation. The survival of a language is the biggest clue that the people who spoke it survived.

Most of the scholarship in studies of hydronomy or topology has been to determine whether a name or term is germanic or celtic in origin, and occasionally, especially with hydronomy, an earlier language. One topological feature which intrigues me however is celtic in origin and is interchangeable in usage. It comes in several forms, corrie, cwm, cirque or couloir. It is the large bowl cut out of the, usually northern slopes, of mountains where glaciers started. Cirque looks french in origin, corrie is used in Scotland and cwm is used in Wales. What term did they historically use in Cumbria? The lake district has many examples of this feature.

Modern english still retains coombe from OE cumb which is presumed to be one of those rare celtic loan words into english, when it then starts to be used to describe other topological features as well.

.. I am surprised to read how easily people equates language to race. Language is a cultural trait, not a biological one, and can be changed without any requirement for population replacement, there are plenty of examples in history.

Indeed there are examples in history, but they should be carefully analysed. If a situation in prehistory can be shown to match all the relevant parameters of one in history, then a reasonable argument can be put forward that there was not necessarily a population replacement together with a language replacement. Unfortunately it has become fashionable to make the most superficial comparisons, which don't hold water for a minute. As I say in the Peopling of Europe:

Quote

Today languages can be spread by education and modern communications. In prehistory the only way languages could spread was by migration of people. So a complete language replacement in a particular region signifies a population change. It has been argued that the change could simply be the arrival of an elite. For example several areas of Europe adopted Latin after they were absorbed into the Roman Empire. However the process took many centuries and was far from universal. In general a common language suggests a common origin, while a related language points to a common origin further back in time.

In the case of Anglo-Saxon England I was pointing out known facts. People continued to speak Cornish well into the historical period. The last native Cornish speaker died in the 18th century, I believe. And of course Welsh managed to hold out until the modern programme for its revival. These areas were conquered by English-speakers late - Wales last of all within the former boundaries of Britannia.

The pattern of Anglo-Saxon settlement in East Anglia simply has no parallel in Cornwall or Wales. In such areas of early AS settlement, we see every sign of almost complete population replacement.

which seems to cover a lot on what is being discussed here, and has the advantage of translating some of the more complex linguistic arguments into English examples.

I'm not sure if I read the bit about the number of English that migrated here in the late 19th and early 20th C. right though, it seems to suggest English descended people outnumber native Welsh which doesn't sound quite right to me. I had a quick look the telephone directory (Newport would probably have more English than most places in Wales) and the name Smith is easily outnumbered by all the more common Welsh names, Jones by over three to one, and Morgan is almost twice as common.

which seems to cover a lot on what is being discussed here, and has the advantage of translating some of the more complex linguistic arguments into English examples.

That's a very good article, thankyou very much. There's a lot in there which explains why the german schoolboy may go into an english butchers and ask, 'may I become a sausage?' and why the south western dialect state things such as 'he do be' rather than 'he is'. In particular, it makes it clear that the periphrastic 'do' is taken from middle english texts. Lots of people simply interpret it as an example of a celtic substrate dating back to the 6th cent. It may be the case, but it is not necessarily the case.

Good maps too. I have Jackson's 4 areas of river names but hadn't seen his occupation of England map before.

.... The pattern of Anglo-Saxon settlement in East Anglia simply has no parallel in Cornwall or Wales. In such areas of early AS settlement, we see every sign of almost complete population replacement.

Jean, are you speaking of a specific village or of East Anglia as a whole? Capelli did a nice cross-section study of England. Athun pulled out his supplementary data (see conversation from another forum below). Norfolk is right in the heart of East Anglia and it shows 27.5% of something that apparently is pre-Anglo-Saxon Briton. Faversham is south but on the east coast in Kent and it shows up to 50.5% of non-Anglo-Saxon. Whether they washed back in later or somehow integrated, there may be more Briton descendants even in East Anglia than we know.

There is a fallacy in the logic that I use that Alan has pointed out. 100% - the Britons is not necessarily Anglo-Saxon and 100% minus the Anglo-Saxons is not necessarily Briton. Also, as Athun pointed out - how sure are we that Anglo-Saxons and Britons are correctly identified?

Quote from: Authun date=12.05.08

.... Weale found high levels of Frisian genes in central England but not Wales and that Capelli also found this also to be the case but when extended throughout the UK, there is a good deal more heterogenity than in the area that Weale studied. In other words, the anglo saxon genetic input is not evenly distributed.

For the admixture analysis, you have to refer to the Supplementary Data. The figures for England are:(EDIT Input from North Germany/Denmark calculated by MCMC.)Morpeth 57.1%Penrith 54.4%York 70.6%Southwell 52.9%Uttoxter 49.6%Norfolk 72.5%Chippenham 70.8%Faversham 49.5%Midhurst 24.4%Dorchester 36.0%Cornwall 57.7%

The surprise here were the low values for Faversham, Midhurst and Dorchester. This is surprising because of the later dominance of the House of Wessex. According to Capelli's (and Weale's) definition of Anglo Saxons and Britons, there don't seem to be many Anglo Saxons in the Wessex kingdom. I like to point out that Chippenham, which is in the land of the Gewissae, the original name for the West Saxons, is actually very high. This would support a hypothesis that this group settled in large numbers in their original territory but as they extended their dominance over the area which was later to be called Wessex, they did so by incorporating British territories into their expanding kingdom.This all assumes the correct identification of Anglo Saxons and Britons of course....

Quote from: Mike date=12.05.08

Just to make sure, I understand it. 1 minus the above numbers would be the Britons then, right? So this is the % of Brittonic Y DNA by English city if Capelli is right.Morpeth 42.9%Penrith 45.6%York 29.4%Southwell 47.1%Uttoxter 50.4%Norfolk 27.5%Chippenham 29.2%Faversham 50.5%Midhurst 75.6%Dorchester 64.0%Cornwall 42.3%

Capelli only sampled Norfolk in East Anglia. Nonetheless I would interpret the 72.5% in Norfolk as a very high AS input. Weale didn't provide admixture test results but did note "a substantial migration of Anglo-Saxon Y chromosomes into Central England (contributing 50%–100% to the gene pool at that time) but not into North Wales." His samples in that area were North Walsham and Fakenham. It should be noted however that Norfolk is a modern city which has experienced immigration during the industrial revolution and is quite different in nature from market towns such as Fakenham and North Walsham. A quick glance at the 1851 census for Norfolk will show you how many people migrated there from Wales and Scotland during the first few decades of the 19th cent.

The differences between Weale and Capelli are that Weale shows a good deal of homogenity in his study area, a level of homogenity which is not continued in Wales, whilst Capelli shows that more heterogenity is observed once we sample more areas in Britain. Weale's picture cannot be projected throughout England.

I do not like the method of using the Welsh or Irish of today as a proxy for southern or eastern English sub-Roman Britons. There are many archaeological reasons and even explicit historical references that suggest the resemblance of the SE of England to the low countries (rather than to Wales etc) was probably well under way in pre-Roman times.

The general phenotypical resemblance of the southern English to the Belgic Gauls (stated to be characterised by lighter hair but shorter stature) and their difference from other 'interior' Britons (stated to be taller but darker haired) is explicitely pointed out in classical sources. There are other references to phenotypical variation among the Britons, most famously the Caledoni of the central Scottish highlands and the Silures of SE Wales although they seem to have been pointed to because they were a little atypical of run of the mill Britons. The main point is that it cannot be assumed that the Celtic fringe people of today can be used as genetic proxys for the Britons of the south and east of England. Once that is realised, the % calculations is seen to be baseless. The resemblance of southern and eastern areas to the Low Countries and divergence from the west probably began at the end of the Neolithic and continued to build for 2000 years or more culminating withl the Belgic tribes in the late Iron Age.

.... The pattern of Anglo-Saxon settlement in East Anglia simply has no parallel in Cornwall or Wales. In such areas of early AS settlement, we see every sign of almost complete population replacement.

Jean, are you speaking of a specific village or of East Anglia as a whole?

I'm not thinking about modern populations at all. I'm thinking about place-names, personal and tribal names, and the structure, location and type of settlements, as well as the style and origin of artefacts, and any other information that we can glean about the type of society from law codes and charters.

In France the Franks took over a working post-Roman economy, run from central places. They slipped into place at the top of society. Romano-Gaulish towns shrank in size. (It seems they started to shrink in the 4th century, as the Roman economy started to totter.) But towns did not completely fade away. They retained some central place/administrative functions, for example as the see of a bishop. This is very different from the picture in Anglo-Saxon England.

Here the towns decayed. Anglo-Saxons had no use for them initially. Their society was neither urban nor highly organised. What we see initially is a scattering of farms and hamlets, often avoiding the former Romano-British settlements. By the time we get settlement names recorded, these are overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon.

I should add once again that this picture varies by district. There is some evidence of the continuance of Christianity, and urban life at a much lower level, in some places in the west of England - Worcester for example. The writing of Gildas is proof enough that Romanitas and Christianity continued to some degee in Wales and the South-West.

The resemblance of southern and eastern areas to the Low Countries and divergence from the west probably began at the end of the Neolithic and continued to build for 2000 years or more culminating withl the Belgic tribes in the late Iron Age.

As Weale shows, to achieve what you propose would have required a rate of constant migration since the neolithic which is three times higher than the modern day migration rates within the European Union. Do you think this is credible?

RMS2, what's your guesstimate as to the rate of R-L21+ in England? I know you have sorted through this for France. Do you have a feel for the % of population of MDKA's of England that is L21+? I think the same question for all of P312+ is also interesting.

.... The pattern of Anglo-Saxon settlement in East Anglia simply has no parallel in Cornwall or Wales. In such areas of early AS settlement, we see every sign of almost complete population replacement.

Jean, are you speaking of a specific village or of East Anglia as a whole?

I'm not thinking about modern populations at all. I'm thinking about place-names, personal and tribal names, and the structure, location and type of settlements, as well as the style and origin of artefacts, and any other information that we can glean about the type of society from law codes and charters.....

Do you have an opinion as far as the start of the migration (pre-industrial) period? In other words, as of 1500-1600 AD, do you think East Anglia was entirely (as in complete or almost complete replacement) Anglo-Saxon, in terms of Y-DNA?